[martin-t]

You're not embracing it, you're forced to accept it because the nature of employer-employee relationships has a fundamental power differential which makes it exploitative.

You helped build the company, you should own a proportional part of it.

The issue with the current system is that only the people who provide money, not the people who provide work, get to own the result. Work (and natural resources) is where value comes from. Their money came from work as well but not only their work, they were in a position of power which allowed them to get a larger cut than deserved. Ownership should, by law, be distributed according to the amount and skill level of work.

Then people wouldn't worry about losing their jobs to automation - because they'd keep receiving dividends from the value of their previous work.

If their previous work allowed the company to buy a robot to replace them, great, they now get the revenue from the robot's work while being free to pursue other things in their now free time.

If their previous work allowed an LLM to be trained or rented to replace them, great, they get get the revenue from the LLM's work...

[mikkupikku]

Crapitalism didn't let up for the benifit of the old veteran framers who didn't want to use nailguns, why should it let up for the benifit of old veteran programmers who don't want to use LLMs? We aren't special. Expecting a shakeup of society's whole economic system just to preserve your preference for old tools is totally out to lunch.

[martin-t]

Because a shakeup only happens when enough people get fucked sufficiently.

I think you underestimate how actual AI would change the economy. All white collar jobs gone, not just programmers - customer support, accountants, managers, therapists, teachers, lawyers, engineers, researchers, designers, HR, marketing. All gone. Everything you can do from home - gone. IF your job doesn't involve physical interaction with the world - gone. And even if it does, it's cheaper to strap a camera to someone's forehead and let actual AI tell him what to do.

These people will still need to eat and they are highly competent so they'll try to get into careers which require manual skill, driving the value of those down as well. And that's even before robotics get sufficiently advanced to stop replacing those. Everyone will get fucked except those who own the AI companies.

And that's how you get a revolution.

[demorro]

Used to be people sold capitalism as something that gave freedom to individuals. Now it's just the thing that forces us to to act against what we believe is best for ourselves and society at large. Anyone who expresses distaste for that is of course, out to lunch.

[mikkupikku]

I'm not selling capitalism. I'm telling you that society is indifferent to your desire to program in the old ways, we're not going to start a worker's revolution for the sake of programmers who don't like coding agents. You can either adapt, or get left behind.

[martin-t]

> adapt, or get left behind.

See my comment above - you still see AI as a tool because you're only considering what I call "AI" instead of aAI (actual AI).

Imagine Stephen Hawking level genius at every area of expertise, able to think faster than any human and cheaper than minimum wage but unable to interact with the physical world.

That's not a tool you adapt to use, that's a tool the owners of your company replace everyone with, except ironically those roughly minimum wage manual workers.

[auggierose]

What about the people who didn't work for the one company that became the only company?

You still don't make sense, mate.

Yes, a better system would be great. Half-baked ideas only stand in its way.

[martin-t]

Since in my system, you cannot buy ownership of a corporate person (just like you cannot buy a natural person, for good reasons), that severely limits how such a situation could arise in the first place.

You still get paid a salary, you can still save up or invest it, it's just that money only buys you ownership according to how much work (times * skill) you put in to make that money.

Any system based on market competition in which your scenario realistically happens was probably so degenerate it would end up being replaced (whether democratically or by force). My system, AFAICT, is strictly (in the mathematical sense) better than the current implementation of capitalism, it just has extra precautions against buying power. What it boils down to is you want a perfect system while I am proposing a system that's better than the current state and you reject it based on not being perfect.

BTW a part of your comment is a condescending personal attack which doesn't add to the discussion and is against the guidelines.